When we left off in Part 1, it was the early 1920’s, when DuPont had begun to develop a compound called titanium dioxide as a pigment suitable for modern automotive (and other kinds of) white paints. DuPont’s work was necessary because by the time its Duco nitrocellulose lacquer paint was introduced, there was still no suitable pigment for sprayed-on white automotive paint. All of the other white pigments (lead, lithopone and zinc, being the main ones) brought traits that made them poor choices for automotive finishes on mass production vehicles. But things were about to change.
The trick with any compound (titanium dioxide being no different) is getting it in quantity. The chemical processes necessary to get the stuff from raw materials were cumbersome and expensive. The compound was available in small amounts from the turn of the century, and it was no doubt used in some applications where white paint was necessary or strongly desired.
For example, the Indiana State Police painted several of its earliest cars, including a 1937 Cord 812, in what appears to have been real white. A Cord because it is best to stick with cars from the home state, of course. White because – well, I have no idea.
Custom paint jobs on one or a handful of vehicles seemed to be the only way most people ever saw a white vehicle in the period after the introduction of DuPont’s Duco lacquer in 1924, up to about 1950. One rare exception was the “Ginger Rogers Duesenberg” that got a finish of dazzling white paint. When a car cost around $20,000 in 1929 (around $300k today), how much could anyone care about the cost of a paint made with expensive titanium dioxide? But for the George Babbitts of the world, Henry Ford’s expression was turned on its head: “You can have any color you want so long as it isn’t white.”
Titanium dioxide pigment would not be available in the quantities and at at the price level for the mass market until DuPont made a technical breakthrough in the late 1940’s which allowed large scale production of the compound at its plant in Wilmington, Delaware starting about 1951, where its Krebs Company subsidiary had begun producing the pigment in the early 1930’s.
By 1950, manufacturers’ color palettes continued to offer more lighter shades, and those shades could be quite light – like this 1950 Mercury in Coventry Green . . .
or this very similar 1951 Buick color called Barton Gray. It is likely that titanium dioxide white was used in small quantities in order to make those extra-light colors possible.
It is difficult to pick the exact moment when white cars first began their long forward march through the industry, but if we had to plant a flag somewhere, that year would very likely be 1951. Before we begin our walk through the first modern white cars offered in the U.S., we must acknowledge that there is a gray area (sorry) between a white paint that is creamy and a not-white paint that approaches creamy from the other direction. There is also a no-man’s land between white and certain light grays, like this Surf Gray used by Studebaker in 1952. Automotive color is a spectrum rather than black and white (yes, I did it again) and those with really good color perception may quibble with some of the examples that follow – are they real white or are they not. (Only their paint mixer knows for sure).
And as noted last time, we must deal with the variations inherent in aged originals and in resprays using paint mixes in a range of closeness to an original look. Not to mention the simple questions of faithfulness in photography. The above two shots are of the exact same car at roughly the same time in history, and the shades of white shown could hardly be more different. In choosing the shot to accompany a discussion of it, I ignored both of these and chose one more or less in the middle – an exercise that was applied to just about every picture that follows. In any event, that is what comment sections are for.
Firsts of anything are notoriously difficult to come up with, given that a trend can pick up steam anywhere. Sports and foreign cars seem to have led the way towards the U.S. flowering into a white car nation. And while perhaps not yet mass production, there is some evidence that some of the earliest Jaguar XK-120s were painted something called Old English White, which was likely more cream than white, but we have to start somewhere. One source says that one of the first three aluminum-bodied cars in 1948 was painted thus, and the color was applied more frequently once the steel-bodied versions started to be built in some volume by 1950 (like this example). As was typical with sports cars from England, most of early XK production was destined for the U.S.
There is no doubt that Volkswagen was a mass produced car by 1950, which was the year the company introduced something called Pearl White – a choice that it continued to offer through 1969. This 1963 example shows that it was not yet the bright white that we would come to know and love (at least some of us) but like the Jaguar, it was getting closer.
This shot shows the contrast a little better, comparing it to both a real gray (Rock Gray, 1960) and a real white (Lotus White, 1966-70). Germany had been a leader in pigments and dyes before WWII and it would be interesting to know what pigments VW used to get this color.
The 1951 Nash-Healey was among the first to enter that borderline area between cream and white a shade they called Champagne Ivory as one of its two original color choices – and in doing so may have helped jumpstart one of the hottest design trends of the next few years. Or at least kept it building among the driving gloves set.
When Pinin Farina began building the cars in 1952 another off-ish shade of white (but with an unknown formula) was one of the choices, according to a Nash-Healy club publication from 2012.
Oldsmobile seems to have been the first to bring real, genuine white to the masses with a 1952-only color called Swan White. Was Oldsmobile (known as GM’s experimental Division) being given the job of testing a modern white automobile paint before wider application? In truth, this paint may have been a bit more of a really, really light gray than a true white, made noticeable by the yellowed whitewalls and the more “normal” white on the adjacent ’59 Impala. If so, this was still as close as anyone was going to a white mass market car of 1952.
Or does this alternate view (contrasted with a genuine gray car) make the case that this may have been GM’s attempt at a dazzling refrigerator-under-flourescent-lights white? The single-year availability of Swan White suggests that GM’s stylists decided that there really was such a thing as too white when it comes to painting a car. It does not appear that this was a very popular body-color choice on 1952 Oldsmobiles, at least if online photos of surviving cars is any guide.
As another photo shows, the color looked much more like a pure, clean antiseptic white when paired with a different body color – a common optical phenomenon, and a much more typical use of white paint on ’52 Oldsmobiles. Ditzler literature indicates that white was only used as a roof color on two-tones like this car, and never as the lower color with a contrasting roof. This slow rollout of white paint must have been a technical success because the following year several really, truly white cars (albeit not quite this white) would burst into multiple GM showrooms.
Echoing the disarray of the early Duco era, Buick, Oldsmobile and Cadillac each offered its own uniquely formulated white paint on their new 1953 models, including Majestic White from Buick.
There was also Cadillac’s Alpine White (which it shared with Olds) and . . .
Oldsmobile’s slightly softer Polar White. These three new white paint colors each debuted with those Divisions’ new halo cars: the Buick Skylark, Cadillac Eldorado and the Oldsmobile Fiesta. We often think of 1953 cars as being as dull as K. T. Keller in a gray flannel suit, but these sparkling white chariots should put that generalization to bed. And perhaps putting the new white paint on flashy high-end and low-production cars was what was needed to really kick off what was probably seen as a fad. That Fiesta, by the way, seems to have kicked off another fad in the two-tone paint treatment that went beyond a simple contrasting roof.
Then of course there was the REAL opening volley of the all-American, all-white car – the iconic Polo White, a fourth unique shade found exclusively on the 1953 Corvette.
Other manufacturers must have sensed the trend and offered some paints they called white but were really not, (like Studebaker’s Salem White) . . .
and others came close (Ford’s Sungate Ivory as used on Indy Pace Cars). Those shades were moving in the right direction, but they were not the bright whites coming out of GM’s paint booths.
Nothing succeeds like success, and 1954 saw more U.S. manufactures join the Great White Way – like the Kaiser Darrin’s Champagne White and . . .
and the bright, clean Ermine White offered on the ’54 Lincoln. It is interesting that none of the really high-volume brands had gone with the new white-whites up to this time – whether this was due to considerations of cost or a desire to milk a new trend with higher-end cars.
Unlike Cadillac and Oldsmobile (who used their new 1953 whites through 1955) Buick was unwilling to leave well enough alone and tried a new formula for its 1954 Artic White.
The 1954 Ford Sandstone White was closer to a real white, but it was nothing at all like the dazzling whites offered on Lincoln or by the GM Divisions.
And between them both was Mercury’s Arctic White, a different color yet (and different from the Buick paint of the same name).
Pontiac offered Winter White, but apparently only as a roof color to complement the body. The contrast to the colorful lower body makes this roof look whiter than it really is.
And Chrysler finally joined the trend mid-year with a pair of new spring colors: Sarasota White offered by Dodge . . .
and a 1954-only color called Snow Crest that graced a small number of Chryslers.
Even Willys and Jeep got into the action with Artic White, offered on both the Aero line and on Jeeps as well.
1955 would be the explosion, otherwise known as “Year Of The White Car” as the color became offered almost universally. There was DeSoto (Surf White) . . .
and Plymouth (Orlando Ivory) that both adopted (and re-named) the Sarasota White paint Dodge had debuted the previous year.
Apparently not content to share, Dodge used a new formulation which it called Sapphire White.
Buick being Buick, it simply would not do to put a carryover white on its new 1955 cars, so for the third time in as many years it offered a new one it called Dover White. Buick must have liked this one because it was used through 1957.
Ford finally joined the party with its Snowshoe White, which was the first really white white from Ford. At least by Ford standards. Ford would become known as the main purveyors of really creamy whites for the next fifteen years with its Colonial and Wimbledon whites.
Mercury must have considered its 1954 Artic White to be white enough for 1955 because they kept it and renamed it Alaska White.
Lincoln did the opposite for 1955 – this paint kept the name of Ermine White, but changed the formula. If you like trivia, you will be interested to know that this formula was eventually used as a fleet white for Greyhound, Coca-Cola, 7-Up and Mobil Oil.
The rest of the independents came around to the new white trend as well. Kaiser inherited Arctic White from Willys . . .
and Studebaker joined the party with Shasta White.
Packard was there too with the luxurious sounding but nonsensically named White Jade . . .
as was Nash and Hudson which shared what AMC called Snowberry White. Many of the ’55 models used the white paints to great effect with more colorful shades in brilliant two-tone treatments – and it is difficult to find all-white examples of most 1955 models.
But then there was the occasional exception of a pure white model that really stood out and was popular – one of the best known being the 1955 Chrysler C-300 (offered only in Black, Tango Red and this 1955 Chrysler/Imperial-exclusive white called Platinum).
This list is not exhaustive because beginning in 1954-55 the number and variety of white color formulas exploded. By 1955 the ready availability of titanium dioxide and the emerging science of synthetic polymers for use as a more durable binder/base made the odds of finding a new American car that was not offered in white mighty slim. A color that had been almost nonexistent three years earlier had become nearly universal. The new color’s popularity could almost be described as white-hot.
As a kind of postscript, note how other than on the Corvette, Chevrolet had been absent from the white car binge, with colors like 1952’s decidedly peachy Beach White . . .
and the well-known Indian/India Ivory of 1954-57.
But this would change with a 1956 Spring color at Chevrolet – Imperial Ivory, used (and most often seen as an accent color) in 1956-57. This paint would finally be in the family of whites that would take over the world. By 1960, white would become the most popular color choice on Chevrolets, a status the color would hold through the entire decade of the 1960’s until gold temporarily muscled it out of the way in 1970. As an example of how the Wild White West would soon settle down, two formulations of white would serve Chevrolet for thirty years: Ermine White (1960-68) and a corporate white known under several names at Chevrolet, including Dover White, Antique White and just plain White (1969-90).
Pontiac would hold out even longer, sticking with a kinda sorta white with its decidedly ivory-ish 1955 White Mist and different (though similar ivories) in 1956-57 . . .
until coming around with Greystone White for 1958 – making Pontiac perhaps the last U.S. nameplate to really embrace white paint.
By 1955 the light, whitish grays like this 1955 Cadillac Alabaster Gray were so last year, and they rapidly disappeared from manufacturer color offerings.
Thus did white cars go from zero to sixty in just a few short years in the first half of the 1950’s, a trend that shows no sign of abating almost seventy years on. Titanium dioxide is still the stuff that whitens the white that is sprayed onto cars (and most anything else). And DuPont still churns it out in great quantities through a process that remains as secret as the recipes for Coca-Cola or Kentucky Fried Chicken (and which has been the subject of a modern story involving Chinese spies). Now you know who to thank (or curse) for the thousands of varieties of white-painted cars that have clogged the world’s streets. It took a long time for white paint to join the list of favorites, but once it got there it made up for lost time. It would take another few decades before silver, gray and black could catch up and define our modern, largely color-free auto paint palette.
Great write up! Had no clue white paint was so difficult make. My dad had a ’69 Chev Townsman wagon. What color? White!
This is a great writeup on a topic I had never thought too much about…Nice selection of cars to illuminate your discussion, too. I’m not much of a Corvette guy, but I like the originals a lot. I wouldn’t mind a Polo White ’54 (cheaper and easier to find than a ’53).
And although it’s not white, that ’55 Coupe de Ville is beautiful.
Like you, I blissfully lived knowing that there weren’t white cars for a long time then there were. When I saw pictures of the 53 Corvette or such, I just took it as something normal.
That 52 Oldsmobile was my surprise. It can’t have been popular, every photo I found online of a solid white version seems to be the same car.
I wonder if someone will come up with something before that original Nash Healey.
Were the ’53-’54 Corvette bodies painted? Somehow, since white was the only available color I thought that it was white gel coat, like a fiberglass boat hull.
Everything I have seen indicates that Corvette bodies were painted – Polo White, Ditzler code 8011, after the raw bodies were smoothed up with the gelcoat. The 53-57 cars used a nitrocellulose lacquer before GM switched (Corvettes, at least) to acrylic lacquer. That same Polo White color was the white on Corvettes through 1957.
Neat article. And I, for one, love white on a car, Nissan’s rather pearl-white on the wife’s Kicks looking very good to my eyes.
And long as the car isn’t silver. I hate silver, on anything but a vintage Mercedes.
White is the cheapest paint colour you can get now and for commercial vehicles perfect.
Piggybacking on this, about when did white become the default color for fleet trucks?
When did appliances begin to be painted in that pure-white shade? It seems earlier than the 1950s explosion of while automobiles. White paint on metal…..if Whirlpool or GE could do it, why not the Big Three?
Probably because a kitchen or laundry room, indoors and always between 60 and 80 degrees, is a whole lot easier on paint than outdoors in the sun, rain, snow, sleet, hail, subfreezing cold, broiling heat, abrasive road grit, gasoline and road tar exposure, pollution fallout, etc.
(Also, a lot of appliances were not painted, but porcelainised)
Yes, I was thinking of items like these from 1933. Spray painted white? If so, what formula and method did they use?
A lot of things like washing machines had a porcelain-type of finish to protect against the water they were exposed to. But like a lot of folks here, I am really curious what they used on the regular painted stuff.
“When did appliances begin to be painted in that pure-white shade?”
That is a really interesting question and one that I did not find an answer to. Some specific appliance industry research might get you there, but I had so much time into this project already that I had to find some point to call it done.
My guess would be zinc or zinc oxide paint was used for appliances before titanium dioxide. Most appliances and household goods live a pampered life indoors where the temperature is steady and where they are not baked in the sun. And some (stoves, particularly) had a porcelainized finish on wear surfaces that was like a ceramic-style coating that was an entirely different thing from plain paint.
It is also possible that many appliance manufacturers in the 20s-40s still used a Henry Ford style of brush/dip and bake, in which case lead white paint could have still been viable.
Great article, JPC. Very informative as to how white cars came about, and are now seemingly everywhere.
In early 1984, I bought a 1983 Thunderbird that I could swear was white, as I bought it at night, from a Baltimore area Ford dealer. I had two leftover ’83(s) from which to choose…. a metallic red and a ‘white’ one. Under the florescent lights, it sure looked white.
I had test driven a Turbo Coupe a few months prior that was a two-tone gray: Light Charcoal (almost white) over Charcoal. I thought that the light charcoal was was a Turbo Coupe only color, but I really liked it.
Well, it turned out that my ‘new’ T-Bird was in fact, that really really light gray ‘color’. The only way you could easily see that it was gray was to a) see it parked next to a truly white car, or b) let the snow start to fall on it. Many folks said to me at the time under one of those two circumstances, “I had NO IDEA your car was gray”.
Retro Rick,
I remember a friend years ago who had parents who bought a new Ford Fairlane at night. The dealership had those orange high intensity lamps in the parking lot. The white car they bought turned out to be VERY PINK, and he did everything he could to get them to return it, but they refused. He never rode in the car during the day!
Amazing.
I never thought of it much.
What did American Red Cross ambulances during WWI use to be white?
Another great question, and one I never found an answer to. WWI was pre-Duco and pre-spray gun, so those white paints would have been brushed and probably baked (with less baking on bodies that had lots of wood in them). It would have about had to have been lead white back then, or maybe lithopone or zinc oxide. They all had drawbacks, but those ambulances probably did not have long lives either (and those in civilian service probably required repainting from time to time).
This is where I would really love to know the makeup of the white used by the German racing teams at that time. They would probably have had every bit of an advanced understanding of coatings as the US would have at the time.
Thank you. This has been a real eye opener. It’s just a subject that I never thought about, despite the obvious fact that white was essentially almost never seen on cars until the post war era.
I knew that VW’s Pearl White was quite a big deal, after only black and dark gray/blue versions. It really changed the look of it. And I had two in that color, and quite loved it, as it polished to a deep luster. t did make the round beetle look rather pear-like.
I will never look at white cars quite the same. And that’s in a good way.
Thanks, Paul. From the way my research went, it became pretty apparent that almost nobody has ever thought of this before.
I was surprised, but perhaps should not have been, that VW’s pearl white of 1950 was still considered enough of a white to remain a choice for twenty years. That 1953 Studebaker I used in the photos looked like they came pretty close to VW’s color. Having seen fairly freshly restored Karmann Ghia in Pearl White made me kind of marvel at it – it really is a fascinating version.
It’s so weird from a modern perspective how white started as this expensive process, made from an at the time exotic raw material, used on halo cars, to being the default fleet color for various cars, trucks and vans where a colorful vinyl livery is applied over!
I remember having a Corvette poster in my bedroom as a kid that had all the side profiles of each year starting with the polo white 53 and ending somewhere in the early 90s whenever my Dad put up the poster. After the first year I believe every single Corvette on it (possibly except for 1988) was a different color, and with that poster the starting point of my learning Corvette history, and not knowing the broader historical context, I thought the 53 was white because it was cheaper, just like why it had the blue flame six and powerglide of course(once again not knowing the actual histories). It’s funny how this hobby can lead you deep into learning about casting metallurgy in blocks and additives in oil and gasoline, yet something seemingly as seemingly plain as white paint has just as much going on to make it exist that I never put any thought into.
Excellent article–this is why I spend so much time at work reading CC. In the 60s and early 70s both of my grandmothers insisted on white cars (intermediate Buicks and Dodges) so I always associated the color with staid old lady aesthetics. But now I suspect they were reacting to an era when white cars were a bit of a high-status novelty.
In high school, I drove a rickety old Pearl White 1963 Beetle. I loved it, but sometimes I felt like I was driving a kitchen appliance.
“they were reacting to an era when white cars were a bit of a high-status novelty.”
This. I never understood my father’s lifelong love of white cars either, but now realize that he would have been about 18 when those new white GM cars hit the market in 1953. I still like a lot of things I found cool and high-class at 18.
Agreed. I have known several people, born in the 1920 to 1930 range, who always had white vehicles. Some went even further with white carpet and other decor.
It does help explain the affinity as it came about in those formative years.
This was a terrific follow-up.
JPC: This is an excellent, thoroughly researched and illustrated piece.
One other interesting historical oddity I was not aware of: The mid-model year “springtime” introduction of new colors.
Those spring colors were particularly big at Chrysler, which used them for many years to bring some fresh oomph to the second half of every model year.
They still do it to some extent, in the Wrangler line there are usually at least a couple of colors that are “delayed availability” every year. The orange on mine is that way, only offered starting halfway through the 2015 model year and then gone again for 2016.
JP, to show you how popular white was becoming in the mid-fifties, in 1953 my Dad bought an Olds 88 sedan in a light royal blue. Before he took delivery, he paid the dealer $50.00 to spray the roof white! His next two cars: a ’55 Buick Century hardtop coupe in canary yellow with a white top (he kept it four days–it was too cramped inside) and a ’55 Super Riviera sedan in a greyish off-white that I never really took a liking to. Great writeup! I’m white with envy!
Well, I sure have learned a lot from this series, but I’m still not a huge fan of white cars.
Remembering Mom’s directive about having something nice to say however, I’m loving that white interiors seem to be making a quiet, limited comeback in certain niches.
Speaking of which, it seems like with the re-emergence of “Vegan Leather”, or “Leatherette”, or whatever we’re calling vinyl automotive upholstery these days there might just be a resurgence of color (including white) in vehicle interiors on the horizon. Maybe.
Thanks so much. This was fascinating.
Perhaps one of the chemists who read this blog can continue the series and explain flop, pearlescence, value, hue, chroma, and all the other complex technical terms. An explanation of candy apple paint would also be most appreciated.
Agreed – pretty much all of that stuff goes beyond my basic knowledge.
Another great thing would be a site somewhere that breaks down a given paint code to show what goes into it. Paintref.com is a fabulous historical resource that provides color codes from the manufacturer and multiple paint suppliers, but I could never find that next step (at least without getting login credentials at one of the manufacturer sites) that would tell me what was different about, say, the Cadillac white and the Buick white of 1953. Paint chips and online pictures of cars can only take you so far in this area.
I’m not a chemist but I can shed some light into Candy paint. It is essentially clear coat that is tinted which is applied over a base coat, typically metallic silver but also metallic gold. The tinted clear is applied in several coats which gives it the look of depth.
Candy paint is one of the first multi stage paint jobs. Essentially it is a tinted clear coat that is usually applied over a silver metallic base coat but occasionally gold metallic is used if a darker final effect is desired.
Apple Red was one of the first and best known Candy colors.
Interesting in that like others I never thought about this before, obvious though it may be.
Not spending time researching about how long the color was around, but my ’62 Lincoln’s color was variously listed as Sultan White or Sultana White (even though actual sultanas are only white compared to other raisins). It was another Ford very creamy off-white, a kind of white that I don’t think is seen on cars today. I wouldn’t have picked that color, but got to think it was really good on those.
The ’54 Dodge convertible looks like some it’s maybe some British car. It’s just a little bigger than today’s typical remaining mainstream sedans. Also just noticed that the smaller ’53-’54 Chrysler products, unlike the previous ones, had a continuous almost up to the beltline fender/body line, while the bigger ones continued to have a front fender that blended into the body and a suggestion of rear fenders, a difference that was continued with the new ’55-’56 body. I guess Chrysler thought that buyers of higher end cars were more conservative.
This is my mother’s wished for ideal car and I have to agree. Country Squires looked best in black or white. But of course with Cheapskate 50’s Dad they were sentenced to a string of base model stick shift six cylinder two doors instead, until the base (and boy were they ever base) model 1958 Chevy wagon. It made the 1956 Plymouth Plaza seem opulent in comparison.
You got me curious and I looked up your 62 Lincoln – that Sultana White was the same code as Corinthian White on Fords and was used from 1960-63. That would have been the same color as my 61 Thunderbird (at least before someone resprayed it red and again after I got it resprayed in the original).
I agree about black and white being prime choices on the Country Squires – but would add maroon/burgundy as a color that goes well with the fake wood too. One of the worst was baby blue – I remember a girl in my grade school class’ family had a baby blue 66 Country Squire at the same time my dad had a white one – that baby blue one never looked right to me. YMMV, of course.
Yes, the fake wood is already two colors. Another color is too many colors.
My mother actually pointed out a Country Squire in front of us in traffic like that one to me as her wished-for-mobile while she was driving the Plaza. The Plymouth was blue with a white roof. She also said she thought Cheapskate 50’s Dad picked it because he thought it was a hardtop or something with the white roof.
As you know, the two high end unit body Fords were made in the same new for 1958 plant – which was so outdated that it was torn down a few years ago.
And speaking of white and third gen Thunderbirds, how about the ’63 Monaco (sigh)….
The topcoat has proved just as interesting as the undercoat, Sir. Really well done.
The 1948 Jaguar XK-120 is firmly fixed in my head as white, yet one photo from the Earl’s Court show seems silver and from another angle, clearly white! What I have found out from a cursory look is that the famous one run to 132 mph at Jabbeke in Belgium was REPAINTED white (from bronze), which makes me think that maybe the first car was white. . ie: consistency for marketing. (They only had three cars at first, btw). The first 58 were alloy-bodied and wood-framed, and a fairly remarkable 20 of those came to Australia – and one at least was white, because in original colors, it sold quite recently. The one that won the Alpine Rally in 1950 was white, and one of the three entered in the 1950 Le Mans looks white. It’s apparently called “Old Englsih White”, and to my squinty eyes, it looks more to the cream end of the spectrum, a bit like Wimbledon White. It’s quite a common color on survivors from full production (in steel, in late ’50) too. I wonder how Jag was doing this, given the tech issues you have outlined at that time.
Another good question. Those cream colors were getting lighter and lighter after the war, and I would suspect that titanium dioxide was slowly coming down in price and up in availability as time passed. I saw where all kinds of colors started getting a lot lighter around that time, and it would not surprise me at all if that compound was added in small amounts to lighten up the creamy colors.
You may have stumbled upon one that came before the 1951 Nash-Healey – I see a source that says one of the first production cars was what they called Old English White. When I get a minute this should be noted in the piece. Thanks – I wondered about some of the English cars, but my source on Jag colors only goes back to 1955.
National Lead Industries opened a titanium mine at Tahawus NY in 1940 to supply the war effort. Earlier iron mines there had had trouble separating the titanium impurities from the iron and had closed down. So it looks that by 1940 a process had been developed to extract the titanium, and by the 1950s titanium dioxide was cheap enough for Detroit to bring out its new whites.
Separating the titanium ore from the iron ore and having a mine dedicated to the stuff was surely a factor, and thanks for this additional info that fills in another blank. But from what I have found, the process of converting the ore to the dioxide form on a large scale was another hurdle that didn’t happen until around 1948 at DuPont. It was that still-secret process that made really large-scale production of the white pigment possible. As with all forward progress, it’s almost never a single thing.
Great white up!
And a not exactly in existence car.
That was supposed to appear above in the candy paint section.
You should have included a photo of Eisenhower’s famous ride in a white ’53 Eldorado in his inaugural parade. That certainly spread the word. I can’t seem to find the photo I remember seeing for years.
Thanks for this, I had forgotten all about that. You remind me that one of the 1952 Imperial Parade Phaetons (the Los Angeles car) was finished in very light cream. There is a color shot (a rarity for those cars before their 1956 refits) of Nixon riding in it in Pasadena’s Rose Parade.
That 1954 Dodge two door in red and white looks positively stubby out back. Maybe it’s the camera angle, but to my eyes it really looked like it had been shortened. The side trim contributes to that perspective as well.
I’ve had three white cars, all different shades, from Plan white, to Pearl White, to impossible to duplicate white. I do like white on cars. Those two tones in your article look really nice.
I’ve never been a big fan of white cars especially given how overdone and common they are today. This despite the fact that I have a white 73 Polara Spring Special. Being a Spring Special there were only four colors of white, black, red and silver. Had I bought it back then I would have taken white. Since I got it in 2010 it was white simply because that was what was for sale in good condition. With the black vinyl roof and chrome, to break things up, the white does have a formal look while the black would have looked like a police car.
Actually that distinctive medallion on the C pillar was the piece de resistance.
Very informative & well written 2-part article. I have been attracted to pale color cars since age 4, when parents bought 2 new 1955 Olds ’98’s, a two door hardtop & a Starfire conv. both matching colors of white over turquoise. Later, mom’s best friend had a new white 1958 Cad. Parents divorced, mom had a new white 1960 Tbird conv., boyfriend had a new white 1960 Impala conv. I have owned a new white 1976 Eldo conv. (special ordered), new white 1996 Sebring LXI coupe (special ordered), new pearl white 1998 Riviera (special ordered), currently a special order 2011 white Camaro. Also have a very pale yellow 1966 Bird conv. Side note: mid-90s, my color vision was lab tested as an element of my grad studies and I could determine about 200+ variations of white. Freaky color vision.
A follow up article might focus on reds. I remember back in the 50s-60s reds tended to fade faster than other auto colors (fact or fiction?). Red pigments also seemed to be more expensive at some time in the past.
Great series, and the first part explained a lot of the reasons why white was ubiquitous among house paints, yet slowly adopted by the auto industry.
My dad retired from PPG, and hearing his stories over the years led me to respect the daunting task that faces paint chemists. Their results have to remain in a liquid suspension prior to application, apply easily, and then dry to an even finish that has to be hard enough to be durable, yet flexible enough to not crack.
Thank you for this two-parter on whiteness that is well worth reading.
Thanks to the authors (and the commentators), it is a pleasure for me to cross the ocean every day and learn interesting views about automotive conditions in other places.
Best wishes for the New Year for all of you from old Europe.
Fred G. Eger
Very interesting article. My question is before Dupont introduced titanium dioxide pigment, how did we get white color? From what I know from Home Depot paint stand, all color paints are mixed with white color paint, my other question is how the color paints were made of back then.
It is also hard imagine that white color vehicle is the most common color for commercial vehicle.
The story of titanium dioxide is very intriguing too. Dupont has been dominated industry worldwide. Its production plant in Delaware is protected with arm guards 24/7 as I was told. About ten years ago, one of my fellow Chinese American in my town, along with few former Dupont employee/contractors, was accused to plot stealing the production trade secret for a Chinese chemical company, I think he went to jail for that.
I understand that titanium dioxide had been around since the 20s or 30s, but it was the process to extract it in volume that was not perfected until after the war. It is my educated guess that from the 30s forward, it was available but expensive, so was rarely used on its own. Colors on lesser cars kept getting lighter from the late 30s through the late 40s, so I would also suspect that the compound was making it into other colors in increasing amounts, to lighten them up.
All other colors used a variety of other pigments – carbon black makes black, and iron oxide makes red, for example. I wish I knew more about paint chemistry and pigments.
Attached is the oldest Ford White Sale ad that I could find on the internet. While this ad claims that this is the “fourth annual white sale,” Ford started their “White Sales” about 1958. The promotion would start in the late winter each year. You could buy a two-tone Ford in any standard color with a white roof at no extra charge. Perhaps one of you will be more successful in finding these old ads.
I always assumed that those Ford “white sale” ads were more of a play on words, riffing off the department store white sales that featured household sheets and linens (of all colors). I also found an Indianapolis Ford Dealer ad from 1964 touting a white sale that was based on a celebration of the Mustang being a pace car for the 1964 Indianapolis 500 race (the car being white, of course).
It would be interesting if the Ford White Sales were more than things like this.
Jim, we did a whole post on a ’66 Ford White Sale Custom 500. It was a way to stimulate sales in the spring: get Custom 500 trimmed like a Galaxie 500 for Custom 500 $.
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/blog/cc-cohort/cohort-outtake-1966-ford-custom-500-2-door-sedan-white-sale-special-presumably/
Frigidaire was originally owned by GM don’t forget.